McBaby - Now 50% Off

I have the great gift of working in my lab with one the most genuine and creatively funny individuals I know. His humor is wholesome and always accompanies his interactions with his colleagues. His work ethic is sound, his aptitude inspires, and his sincerity wins trust. Because he inspires trust, we’re willing to take risks and rise to the occassion to meet a common goal. We’re willing to sacrifice a little more of ourselves for a project, knowing what he himself is giving for it. If you’re working late on a project owned by him, he will work there alongside you. Even if it’s not his responsibility, he’ll make sure you know he’s there to help. And if you ask to help him on something, he’ll ensure your effort goes towards something meaningful. This colleague, far from just offer a frequent laugh, helps to form a sort of cohesion between us as tiles in a mosaic. He echoes in the imprints we make, beyond those made as a professional orgnization and touching even our lives as individuals. The workplace is where we develop the attitudes and stories that we take home; in my case, this colleague makes sure I never return empty-handed.

I learned recently that this colleague of mine also has a somewhat rare autoimmune condition. I imagined something. What if his parents, when they chose to have children, elected for IVF, and were offered a panel of options that survived the initlal fertilization process. One had blue eyes, the other had brown… one was taller, one was shorter… one was expected to be a little smarter, the other a little slower… of ten options, two showed problematic genetic mutations; one for cancer, the other an autoimmune disorder. They chose a couple from the remaining eight and “discarded” the rest.

Well, in that case, my colleague, the one I and others hold in high esteem and grattitude, would never have become part of our lives.

There are a million tragic reasons that could have prevented my colleague’s birth; his parents could have chosen a different time to have children, they might have never met, they could have died in an accident… certain friends had to be made made, certain bars visited, certain trips taken, others dismissed, educational choices made… even certain wars fought and certain people killed… indeed, nothing short of an uncountable number of variables determined my colleague’s existence. But the least of this scenario is its trageic nature. It would not be a mere tragedy that my colleague was never born; it would have been, bluntly, a crime. To willfully have “discarded” my colleague’s life in favor of some preference whatsoever is equivalent to staring my colleague in the eyes to say, “Actually, you do not deserve to live if there were better options than you. If we could do it over again with today’s technology, you probably would never have been wanted.” It’s not a leap to understand why the original action is equivalent to saying this. There were ten viable lifeforms ready to flourish into greater and greater maturity if only allowed; and the ones that had “defects” were not allowed, and among them was my colleague. He was not allowed because he was inferior. Hasn’t humanity already been through this with the auctioning of African slaves in the 1800s, or the forced sterilizations of 1933 under Nazi eugenics? What’s the difference between a dictator deciding whether someone should live or die and a mother or father deciding it? Do parents own their children as if they were items on a grocery shelf? I thought we gave up the idea that persons could be owned when we abolished slavery. Is it not rather that parents are the chief caretakers of their children, charged by the natural law of the heart with the duty of ensuring their flourishing and education? Why are we suddenly thinking eugenics and person-ownership was all a great idea after all, and that it just needed a few more white lab coats, research grants and fashionably calling it a “startup” to make it ethically sterile?

Congratulations, parents! Thanks to an ever-determined scientific community to bring you what you never asked for, you will soon have access to the brand new, tantilizingly promising Build-Your-Own McBaby. The power of choice, no longer restrained to your Cook Out milkshake flavor or the trims on your new car. Now you too can “pick your baby,” in the words of Nucleus’s Kian Sadeghi, the company now offering these very possibilities.

Nucleus also provides probability assessments for the embryos’ IQ, height and eye color. Sadeghi said that Nucleus informs customers of the strength of the various predictions. IQ predictions are limited in accuracy, according to the company.
Sadeghi said he doesn’t draw a line between people who want to take a DNA test so they can know their own risks and try to prevent diseases and those who screen and rank embryos to choose one with a better chance of living far beyond 85.
“The longevity movement is about taking medicine back and putting it in the people’s hands,” Sadeghi said. “Why would that not apply now to the most intimate, personal, emotional, sensitive decision you will make? Picking your baby.” (“Longevity Is Now a Factor When Picking an Embryo for IVF”, Amy Dockser Marcus, WSJ)

Far from exaggerating anything for rhetorical pizazz, I hope to uncover the presently unfolding ethical nightmare, to unblind the reader’s eyes to its severity. Our eyes have been blurred for reasons that are easy to explain.

Let’s start with this one: at the embryonic stage, it doesn’t feel like the future person it will become really exists yet. So, at that point, it really feels no different than picking out a LaCroix flavor from the random pile in the cooler. But this is almost ChatGPT logic, inventing the next word by only considering the previous ones. Let’s try using our human intelligence a little and thinking further ahead and working backwards. We will find that one embryo became (or more in case of twins) one person. My colleague came from one baby, and a very specific baby. I wouldn’t have recognized that baby as my present colleague, but, as it turns out, people develop and change and grow, though they remain the same person. Murder of that particular baby would have directly killed my colleague. That baby likewise came from one embryo, and a very specific embryo. I wouldn’t have recognized that embryo as that baby, no more than that baby as my colleague. But, that embryo became that baby, and that baby came from that embryo, and my colleague was that embryo. Destruction of that embryo, from my colleague’s point of view, is no different than destruction of that baby, the destruction of himself.

One could find difficulty with such strong words, because it feels like one child is coming out of the equation, and it feels like it’s the same child regardless of the choice of embryo. This is a delicate error, because its perceived as a simple extension of that “blind” expectation natural to pregnancy. A mother loves “her baby”, not knowing at all what it yet will be like, perhaps keeping even its gender a secret until the last moment. But we have to try and use our human intelligence just a little: one person came from one embryo, and changing embryos is not like changing the ingredients that go into a person, it is changing the very person itself. Proof enough is that all ten embryos could have been implanted in different women and ten different people would have been born. There is no quantum entanglement here; each embryo is a separate person in the earliest moments of their human development. Destruction of one embryo directly kills one person. There’s no way around it. In fact, even Sadeghi knows it; he doesn’t call it, “Picking your embryo;” he calls it what it is: “Picking your baby.” Picking which baby will live in your arms, and which will die at your arms.

Does it still not feel like death, does it still feel like only adjusting the parameters for the oven so that what comes out is more to one’s liking? That would be cosmetics, that would be therapeutics, that would be gene editting even. But here, the child is already formed as it will be; the lifeform has begun. We are not adjusting parameters here, we are not tweaking ingredients; the product is already formed, it is already what it will be. It is not choosing your spouse carefully so that your offspring may be as endearing to you as your spouse is to you. We are past the point where things that can be done before life begins, and we are now at the point where life can be continued or terminated, nurtured or killed.

Another may be feeling, nobly, that they want their child to have a good life, a long life, a comfortable life. I want the same, and I hope everyone wants it, for themselves and for all. But how can one say for sure whether a life will be happy or miserable? Many, many biologically healthy individuals have succombed to suicide, strangled by mental or spiritual despair. Likewise, many, many biologically abnormal individuals have shared lives full of love and happiness. Shall we start enlarging death row by including not only those convicted beyond a reasonable doubt but also those with “probable” guilt? Shall we deport detained immigrants just because they “might” be involved in a gang? Hey, maybe we could even get a tax refund for both. How about you say to my colleague, who has brought joy to his family and his workplace, “Since the likelihood of happiness was higher for someone else without your autoimmune disorder, if we could do it over again, we’d never let you have the chance.”

It sounds harsh, though. Maybe the harshness makes the words seem like too much of a leap. I can try describing the exact same crime in many different ways. “Your life has been incredibly fruitful. Despite all odds, you have surprised the world. We will be sure never to let that mistake happen again.” Or, “We regret to inform you that, due to overwhelming odds against your favor, the subsequent resources for life have been withheld and redistributed to others more likely to benefit from them.”

That last one almost seems palatable if you have strong socialist leanings. Try saying it to my colleague in the face, then, like this: “We regret to inform you that, due to overwhelming probability of increased health insurance claims and federal welfare burden, you are projected to expend resources otherwise available to healthier adults suffering from acute rather than chronic conditions such as your own. As such, in accordance with the law of public democracy, your line of credit, salary, and internet communications will cease to function by the end of the calendar month. Thank you for choosing Life; we hope you enjoyed your time, and please remember to kindly fill the exit survey.” If you wince saying such a thing to him today, why not wince saying such a thing when he was a child, or when he was a baby, or when he was in the womb, or when he was an embryo?

I am afraid some day will come when it won’t frighten us anymore to even say such things even to a person’s full adult face. When we will even be made to feel guilty for existing with imperfection. Oh, my bad, we’re already there.

In one [secretely recorded conversion], a hospital ethicist threatens Mr. Foley [a patient in a Canadian mental-health ward] with denial of insurance coverage and says it would cost him “north of $1,500 a day” to stay in the hospital. When Mr. Foley protested, the ethicist retorted: “Roger, this is not my show. My piece of this was to talk to you about if you had interest in assisted dying.” (“Welcome to Canada, the Doctor Will Kill You Now”, Nicholas Tomaino, WSJ)

So if we already fulfilled that easy prophecy and consequence, where else do we go from here? Imagine showing up to school in 5th grade and your teacher thinking, “Wow, she has asthma. I haven’t seen that in awhile. Her parents must have such bad taste in baby picking. And to think of how selfish they are to drain our education and health system like this. Surely they had better options. Maybe it was too expensive for them… in that case, thank goodness we get to talk to these kids about the great resources the government is making available to them so they can be smarter than their parents when it comes to these things. The sexuality modules have really progressed; I didn’t learn half this material until high school back in my time!” Those who “pick their baby” and are convinced of its individual and societal “good” are bound to begin questioning those “no-choicers”. To have a child naturally will one day be seen as egotistical, irresponsible, animalistic, and cruel. How could it be seen otherwise within this framework and technological availbility? What will happen to spouses who once said to each other, “Loving you more than anything, I will accept and love anything with you; no matter what comes, I want him or her because he comes from us, and I want to share us with him.” Shall man and woman forget how to say such a thing to each other, and mean it? Shall children forget what it is like to be the fruit of such a bond and promise? Instead they’re going to implicitely hear, “We loved you because, by chance, you had the most marks.” How special, how tender that sounds! And if we find it strange to know such love for even our own children, then what shall we feel for those who are not our own?

Maybe you think I’m being too romantic. It’s true that culture seems to keep losing interest in the nuances of life. Buildings don’t need to be made of colorful marbles mined in locations across the world; just make it all out of cement and call it a day, it seems many of today’s architects believe. Nuanced understanding isn’t necessary; just train the AI and run with it. Nuanced language isn’t necessary; the simpler the better. Nuanced entertainment is boring; just break the third wall and it’ll be a blockbuster. Nuanced politics isn’t intelligent; be hypercritical and you’ll win praise and belonging. Nuanced medicine isn’t scientific; do as you’re told and you’ll be called civilized. It will come back to bite us, one way or another.

At least your McBaby will be 50% off if you refer a friend.